Otherwise the skin was completely unbroken. There wasn't a drop of blood. It made no sense, but for a month afterward Moose could still feel those strong fingers wrapped so tightly around his spine the fingertips must have met.
Ultimately Moose Mulroy had a lot of time to contemplate it all, because he found himself unemployed and on the street. He considered himself lucky.
Lots of folks ended up dead.
Chapter 13
Remo Williams released the security chief on the thirty-fourth floor, the top floor. The man made a pile in one corner of the elevator as Remo came out of the lift with every sense alert.
He found himself surrounded. By videocam lenses.
A man waved at him from behind his camera.
"Just pretend we're not here," he said in a friendly voice.
"That's right," chimed in a second. "We're just here to record events as they happen. Pay no attention to us."
"Do whatever you were going to do," encouraged a third cameraman.
And so, forefingers extended, and Remo began to methodically shatter each camera lens.
"Hey! You can't do that!"
"This isn't how it's done!"
"We're the media!"
Remo growled, "And here's the message: Get out of my way."
Their eyes blackening from sudden impact with recoiling viewfinders, the camera crews begrudgingly fell back.
There was only one security guard. He had his Glock up in a two-handed marksman's grip, the muzzle pointed at Remo. For a twelfth of a second.
Walking on the outside of his soles, Remo feinted, moved in, and used the man's own hands to crush the plastic gun into so much sharp black plastic shards.
He left the guard moaning and wringing his bloodied hands.
Heads poked out of half-open doors all along the corridor.
"Which way to the roof?" Remo asked.
Most of the heads withdrew like frightened gophers.
A hand snaked out and pointed helpfully in the direction of the ceiling. "Up. The roof is up."
"I know that, you dip. What I don't know is how to get there."
"Fire stairs. Straight ahead and turn left."
Then, a bullet ripped down through the ceiling tiles and forced the remaining heads to withdraw behind slamming doors.
Remo shot forward. A woman screamed. The high, piercing sound was joined by another scream. Both screams were ear-punishing. Yet they blended into one anguished otherworldly shriek as if vented by identical twins, dying in harmony.
Remo floated up the stairs, leaping over the sprawled bodies of security guards who had died defending their posts, and reached the roof.
It was a nest of satellite dishes. In the center of the nest, like a dragonfly, sat a luxury helicopter.
And standing in the shadow of the drooping helicopter blades was a small knot of people.
The knot consisted of two parts-a man and a woman, and another man with a woman.
The nearest pair whirled, and Remo recognized the flat, pasty face of Cheeta Ching. She was so frightened her face was shedding flakes of pancake makeup like dandruff.
"Ronco!" she cried. "Help me!"
"Ronco?" Remo said blankly.
"Stay back," the man with the gun said, pushing the barrel into Cheeta Ching's temple. He was tall, his features masked by oversized sunglasses and a big hat. He was using Cheeta Ching as a human shield, but Remo could see that his lower legs, visible behind Cheeta's, were bare.
"What makes you think that'll stop me?" Remo asked.
"Ronco! How could you!"
The gunman transferred the pistol muzzle to Cheeta Ching's bulging stomach. "Or I can waste the brat."
Remo stopped dead still. The baby was another matter.
"Just hold that pose," said the gunman, walking backward.
The other pair had frozen at the open door of the helicopter, Jed Burner turned and gave Layne Fondue a hard shove. On all fours, she scrambled into the helicopter.
Then the gunman resumed backing away, pulling Cheeta with him. Her almond eyes were wounded.
"Ronco!" she pleaded. "Don't let this happen!"
"Ronco," warned the gunman, "don't be a chump."
Remo stood, rotating his thick wrists absently. His face was stone.
The gunman reached the waiting helicopter and abruptly sat down on its sill. Remo saw his legs clearly. He was wearing a plaid kilt of some kind.
But Remo was keeping his eyes on the man's hands. To pull Cheeta Ching into the helicopter in her condition was a two-handed job. To pull it off, the gunman would have to point his weapon away from his captive.
Crossing the roof while the gun was pointing elsewhere was possible, Remo knew. But the weapon would have to be at least three feet from Cheeta for it to work. Any closer and it was even money Cheeta would catch a bullet.
Imperceptibly, Remo came up on his toes, ready to strike.
Then, behind him, KNNN cameramen poured out of the roof hatch, along with a pair of reporters clutching hand microphones. Fanning out, they called excited questions to no one in particular.
"Is this a kidnapping?"
"If so, who's being kidnapped?"
And the gunman whipped his muzzle back to Cheeta's belly.
"You!" he shouted, yanking Cheeta into the helicopter. "Keep them away or the slope gets a .45 caliber abortion right here!"
That decided it. Remo pivoted and began tripping legs. He caught videocams as they slipped from clutching fingers and smashed them under his feet. He made sure to pop cassette ports where he could and pulverize the cassettes, so that his face could not be broadcast.
The helicopter began to wind up.
"Nobody go near that bird," Remo warned, crushing a cassette to powder in a cameraman's face.
And no one did.
Blowing air and city grit, the Superpuma lifted off and racketed out to sea.
Remo watched it go. "Damn," he muttered. "Chiun is going to kill me."
A reporter shoved a microphone into his face and asked Remo a breathless question.
"Can you tell us what's going through your mind right now?"
Remo answered the question by using the mike to perform a radical tonsillectomy on the questioner.
The others withdrew.
"Pretend we're not here," one suggested.
"Pretend you're not here," Remo growled.
The KNNN news gatherers who could still walk under their own power hastily helped the others down the roof hatch.
Remo ignored them. His features grim, he watched the helicopter become a dwindling speck of light in the night sky.
When the sound of its rotors no longer reached his sensitive ears, Remo slipped jumped down the hatch and found an empty office, where he called Harold Smith.
"Smitty. Bad news."
"What is it, Remo?"
"I got here too late. Burner and Haiphong Hannah just took off with some guy in a kilt. They got Cheeta. She's a prisoner."
"What was Cheeta Ching doing there?"
"Who cares? Listen, if Chiun finds out I've blown this mission, there's no telling what he'll do."
"How can we stop it?"
"Search me. But I'll find a way."
And he did.
Twenty seconds later, the building filled with the tormented wrenching of metal under extreme stress. The awful sounds could be heard coming from the roof. When a two-man security team ventured up there, they came down, weapons mysteriously missing.
"I think we should evacuate the building," said one.
"Evacuate?" the station manager blurted out. "Why?"
"The guy on the roof told us we should."
"What kind of a reason is that?"
Then one of the satellite dishes sailed past the long eastern window, on its way to the sidewalk many floors below.
Staff surged to the window. Another dish cartwheeled past.
The station manager cleared his throat and rumbled, "I move we evacuate right now."
The evacuation was swift, orderly, and successful. Everyone exited the west side of the building, because the dishes seemed to be falling on the east face.